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It is not true. Culture plays a huge part in how people react physically to emotions.
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Submitted 11 months ago by Kyoyeou@slrpnk.net to nostupidquestions@lemmy.world
Comments
TheHolyChecksum@infosec.pub 11 months ago
Acamon@lemmy.world 11 months ago
As many other people have said humans do not have same physical reactions to emotions. There’s some similarity for certain emotions (disgust seems to be the one that gets the most evidence) but there’s a lot of variety of how very basic emotions are expressed across the world. This study is a good example showing how Western subjects look to how the muscles and movements of the face show emotions, but East Asian subjects looked small movements of the eyes to identify emotions and their intensity.
bilboswaggings@sopuli.xyz 11 months ago
Because it’s beneficial for the species
If you can tell when the other is happy you are more likely to produce offspring and less likely to die by not angering someone further
If emotions were random for every person life with be way harder
PsychoNot@lemmy.world 11 months ago
We actually don’t have the same emotional expressions. The early studies on “universal” emotional expressions (joy, disgust etc) were extremely biased. The researches paid western actors to make facial expressions, took pictures of those expressions, then showed those pictures to various uncontacted / low contact tribes. However, the researches tended to ask the tribes what expression they saw repeatedly until they gave the answer the researches expected.
Even smiling isn’t universal. Think about cultural differences between smiling even in modern day Russia. There’s evidence that smiling might have been an expression of joy but was deemed socially inappropriate in Ancient Rome.
Emotional expressions in the brain differ between individuals and even differ within the same individual on separate occasions of the “same” emotion. Lisa Barrett has an excellent book on this topic: How Emotions are Made.
scarabic@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Smiling has been denigrated in lots of cultures but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a natural reflex. What it means is that the stuffy Roman aristocracy who left all the written records behind considered it undignified and beneath them - a sign of being common. Other cultures think smiling makes you look like an idiot. But even these cultures have an opinion about smiling so it seems to be present even though the culture works against it. This in fact suggests it is innately wired and not culturally learned.
TimewornTraveler@lemm.ee 11 months ago
Sounds like a big generalizing leap from a single study with clearly flawed methodology. If the tribes were low contact, couldn’t the repeated questioning have more to do with them not understanding what was being asked if them, rather than the facial expressions? Was there any effort to demonstrate that they were already effective at putting emotions into words?
PsychoNot@lemmy.world 11 months ago
This was a very brief explanation of many studies looking into this exact problem. The conclusion is from their research, not mine. You’re also making my point, that expressions of joy, happiness etc vary between cultures. This article talks about some of the research but I recommend reading the original studies or Barrett’s book.
Article
ultrahamster64@lemmy.world 11 months ago
What do you mean “cultural differences between smiling even in modern day Russia”?
Num10ck@lemmy.world 11 months ago
western cultures use smiling to show friendliness and availability, etc. Russians feel it makes you look like an idiot, unsophisticated, childish, etc. Picture ‘keeping it gangster’, thats their world. it’s rough and dangerous and tragic.